As companies contemplate investing in various sales analytics solutions, they frequently conduct their due diligence and identify what topics they’d like addressed by the solution. Whether they are seeking a product-based solution or a consulting engagement, their investment will focus on increasing visibility, enforcing accountability, and improving sales performance. The dilemma comes when management begins to notice these improvements resulting from their sales analytics investment, but struggles to quantify and track the quality of the returns on their investment. Accurate tracking and measurement of these investment outcomes can be accessed through sales management and pipeline reports.
Sales teams and groups frequently come in all shapes and sizes. Processes aren’t necessarily steady and consistent across groups within the same company. One goal frequently encountered in launching sales analytics efforts is to consolidate the KPI’s and metrics across the organization while standardizing various key measures.
A result of this standardization typically will be the identification of various modules and solutions that will get implemented through introducing a sales analytics solution. While product-based solutions are typically delivered through various technologies, consulting engagements are frequently launched in conjunction with the products. The various solutions within a sales analytics technology application frequently resemble the following:
- Pipeline Overview: This product analyzes and reports on the overall health of an organization’s pipeline. CRM data will get inspected along with budget and quota data while coverage metrics will be calculated. Other KPI’s frequently encountered with this type of solution focus on deal size, sales cycle, etc.
- Pipeline Progression: While creating new pipeline continually is of vital importance to a sales organization, continuing to develop and nurture that pipeline is arguably just as important. After identifying the key fields and values, this type of solution normalizes pipeline data and analytically determines the progression of pipeline by sales teams.
- Pipeline Risked Opportunities: Organizations in their forecasting efforts regularly identify deals deemed at risk. This product leverages a data-driven approach to highlight risky deals and is frequently more accurate and useful than subjectively flagging deals as being at risk.
- Sales Rep Quota Attainment: Sales reps typically are focused on attaining their monthly, quarterly, and annual quotas. This type of analysis focuses on evaluating the likelihood of reps to meet and crush their quotas. By tracking the progress of reps toward satisfying their quotas, this tool can evaluate the likelihood of reps to meet their quotas while also assessing the quality of their pipelines.
- Sales Rep Scorecard: Sales leaders can evaluate the performance of their reps across a variety of measures. This product aggregates pre-defined or customized lists of KPI’s that are applicable to all reps. All reps can be evaluated, and their rankings can be dynamically examined across many metrics (e.g., win rates, historical attainment, T&E productivity, etc.).
- Sales Rep Performance: This type of solution puts the performance of each and every sales rep under the microscope. By examining close rates, historical pipeline and bookings trending, staging, etc., this product analyzes rep productivity and provides management with visibility to the performance of reps in relation to one another.
- Sales Rep Prediction: While historical performance does not always predict future performance, it is undeniable that historical data is a strong indicator of future data. And when examining the behavior of historical data and leveraging the trends and findings, this type of solution yields sales predictions for a team, rep, region, etc.
